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    <link>https://victortrac.com/</link><description><![CDATA[]]></description>
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        <title>&lt;![CDATA[Mount Fuji]]&gt;</title>
        <link>https://victortrac.com/photos/flickr/mount-fuji-2025-05-05-54496048803/</link>
        <pubDate>Mon, 05 May 2025 00:00:00 &#43;0000</pubDate>
        <guid>https://victortrac.com/photos/flickr/mount-fuji-2025-05-05-54496048803/</guid>
        <description><![CDATA[ Mount Fuji ]]></description>
      </item><item>
        <title>&lt;![CDATA[Christchurch, New Zealand]]&gt;</title>
        <link>https://victortrac.com/photos/flickr/christchurch-new-zealand-2025-04-13-54457938782/</link>
        <pubDate>Sun, 13 Apr 2025 00:00:00 &#43;0000</pubDate>
        <guid>https://victortrac.com/photos/flickr/christchurch-new-zealand-2025-04-13-54457938782/</guid>
        <description><![CDATA[ Christchurch, New Zealand ]]></description>
      </item><item>
        <title>&lt;![CDATA[#ThatWanakaTree]]&gt;</title>
        <link>https://victortrac.com/photos/flickr/thatwanakatree-2025-03-31-54419470065/</link>
        <pubDate>Mon, 31 Mar 2025 00:00:00 &#43;0000</pubDate>
        <guid>https://victortrac.com/photos/flickr/thatwanakatree-2025-03-31-54419470065/</guid>
        <description><![CDATA[ #ThatWanakaTree ]]></description>
      </item><item>
        <title>&lt;![CDATA[Mount Cook, New Zealand]]&gt;</title>
        <link>https://victortrac.com/photos/flickr/mount-cook-new-zealand-2025-03-15-54389862361/</link>
        <pubDate>Sat, 15 Mar 2025 00:00:00 &#43;0000</pubDate>
        <guid>https://victortrac.com/photos/flickr/mount-cook-new-zealand-2025-03-15-54389862361/</guid>
        <description><![CDATA[ Mount Cook, New Zealand ]]></description>
      </item><item>
        <title>&lt;![CDATA[On the way to Mount Cook]]&gt;</title>
        <link>https://victortrac.com/photos/flickr/on-the-way-to-mount-cook-2025-03-14-54390234675/</link>
        <pubDate>Fri, 14 Mar 2025 00:00:00 &#43;0000</pubDate>
        <guid>https://victortrac.com/photos/flickr/on-the-way-to-mount-cook-2025-03-14-54390234675/</guid>
        <description><![CDATA[ On the way to Mount Cook ]]></description>
      </item><item>
        <title>&lt;![CDATA[Switching to fish shell]]&gt;</title>
        <link>https://victortrac.com/posts/switching-to-fish/</link>
        <pubDate>Sat, 15 Aug 2020 22:30:58 -0500</pubDate>
        <guid>https://victortrac.com/posts/switching-to-fish/</guid>
        <description><![CDATA[Over the years, I’ve primarily used bash with occassional forays into zsh (and oh-my-zsh). zsh never seemed significantly better than bash, and it introduced enough friction in writing and running scripts that I’d inevitably switch back to trusty bash after a few months.
I’ve played around with fish in the past, but I never took the time to make an honest go at it. This time I’ve decided to spend some time to learn the shell, port my bash customizations, and see if fish will become my permanent choice.
]]></description>
      </item><item>
        <title>&lt;![CDATA[The John Muir Trail]]&gt;</title>
        <link>https://victortrac.com/posts/john-muir-trail/</link>
        <pubDate>Fri, 21 Dec 2018 15:11:00 -0500</pubDate>
        <guid>https://victortrac.com/posts/john-muir-trail/</guid>
        <description><![CDATA[ Sky Blue Lake Back in early January my good friend Dave sent out an email to 20 or so people asking if anyone would be interested in doing the John Muir Trail with him. He mentioned something about going ultralight and doing it in 10 days, but I really didn’t think those were important details at the time. I had never gone backpacking for more than a long weekend, over a very short distance, but how hard could this be? I take my kids hiking in Austin all of the time. We go at least a mile or two. Of course I was in.
]]></description>
      </item><item>
        <title>&lt;![CDATA[2014]]&gt;</title>
        <link>https://victortrac.com/posts/20150109-2014-year-in-review/</link>
        <pubDate>Thu, 01 Jan 2015 00:00:00 &#43;0000</pubDate>
        <guid>https://victortrac.com/posts/20150109-2014-year-in-review/</guid>
        <description><![CDATA[A little late, but this is my 2014 Year in Review. It’s so hard to summarize an entire year into a few paragraphs and a handful of selected photos. I’ve spent hours over the last few weeks going through photos and videos that I took the year, some of which I’m looking through for the first time. I’m reminded of all the trips taken and places seen, some which seem so long ago but most just seem a few months ago, even if they were from the beginning of 2014. Time flies by as it always does, and the process of writing my Year in Review posts helps cement in my memory the things that I think ought to be remembered. So here goes…
Travel:
Vietnam 1/19-1/25 NYC-Austin 2/2 AUS->CHS 5/24 CHS->LAS 5/28 AUS->PDX - 6/20 AUS->JFK Big Bend 10/24 AUS->CHS 12/25 ]]></description>
      </item><item>
        <title>&lt;![CDATA[Lower Manhattan at Dusk]]&gt;</title>
        <link>https://victortrac.com/photos/20141004-lower-manhattan/</link>
        <pubDate>Sat, 04 Oct 2014 00:00:00 &#43;0000</pubDate>
        <guid>https://victortrac.com/photos/20141004-lower-manhattan/</guid>
        <description><![CDATA[ Lower Manhattan at Dusk, from the top of 30 Rockefeller Plaza ]]></description>
      </item><item>
        <title>&lt;![CDATA[2013 Year in Review]]&gt;</title>
        <link>https://victortrac.com/posts/20140101-2013-year-in-review/</link>
        <pubDate>Wed, 01 Jan 2014 00:00:00 &#43;0000</pubDate>
        <guid>https://victortrac.com/posts/20140101-2013-year-in-review/</guid>
        <description><![CDATA[ View from Brooklyn of the NYC New Year's Eve fireworks show Last night Rebecca and I watched the NYC New Year’s Eve fireworks show from our Brooklyn apartment. We are fortunate enough to have a direct view of the Statue of Liberty from our living room, around which the fireworks were clustered. It was a nice, relaxing end to an eventful year.
We moved to New York City in August when an opportunity came up for me to work out of Bazaarvoice’s NYC office for a short period. I have always wanted to live in NYC, and as parents of a 1-something year old, this was perfect timing. Finn, our toddler, wasn’t old enough to have to worry about leaving any friends behind or having to deal with schools in NYC. It wasn’t difficult to tidy up the rest of our lives in Austin by renting out our house, loaning out our cars to friends, and putting everything we didn’t take with us to NYC in storage. I found a 1-month, furnished sublet on Craigslist for the month of August and we used the time to find our “permanent” apartment. Apartment hunting in NYC can be a bit of an ordeal, but in the end we found ourselves deciding between living in the Upper West Side or Park Slope, Brooklyn. Park Slope felt a little more family friendly with its nice parks, walkable streets, and abundance of restaurants and small shops. And so at the beginning of September, we found ourselves residents of a very hip part of Brooklyn.
]]></description>
      </item><item>
        <title>&lt;![CDATA[Snowflake]]&gt;</title>
        <link>https://victortrac.com/photos/20131214-snowflake/</link>
        <pubDate>Sat, 14 Dec 2013 00:00:00 &#43;0000</pubDate>
        <guid>https://victortrac.com/photos/20131214-snowflake/</guid>
        <description><![CDATA[ NYC Snowflake ]]></description>
      </item><item>
        <title>&lt;![CDATA[Chinatown Fishmonger]]&gt;</title>
        <link>https://victortrac.com/photos/20131213-chinatown-fishmarket/</link>
        <pubDate>Fri, 13 Dec 2013 00:00:00 &#43;0000</pubDate>
        <guid>https://victortrac.com/photos/20131213-chinatown-fishmarket/</guid>
        <description><![CDATA[ Chinatown Fishmonger ]]></description>
      </item><item>
        <title>&lt;![CDATA[EC2 Ephemeral Disks vs EBS Volumes in RAID]]&gt;</title>
        <link>https://victortrac.com/posts/ec2-ephemeral-disks-vs-ebs-volumes-in-raid/</link>
        <pubDate>Sat, 02 Jan 2010 00:00:00 &#43;0000</pubDate>
        <guid>https://victortrac.com/posts/ec2-ephemeral-disks-vs-ebs-volumes-in-raid/</guid>
        <description><![CDATA[EC2 Disk Overview Amazon’s EC2 service is really neat, but its disk subsystem has some peculiarities that are not initially obvious. Up until very recently, root directories (’/’) at EC2 were limited to 10Gb, a limit defined by the maximum size of an Amazon Machine Image (AMI), essentially a template of an EC2 instance. In order to use more disk space, Amazon provides ephemeral disks that one can format and mount anywhere on the file system. However, in order to get persistent storage, one has to use network-attached EBS volumes, a sort of limitless in capacity but bound in I/O wonder of Amazon architecture. There are clear performance implications in choosing how to configure an EC2 instance’s disk subsystem, so I recently benchmarked some various ephemeral and EBS RAID configurations.
Ephemeral disks Pros:
Free (included in cost of EC2 instance) Stable, predictable performance on par with a standard physical hard disk Abundant storage (up to 1.7TB on a c1.xlarge) Cons:
Ephemeral - if the instance shuts down, all data is lost Average random seek performance (6-7ms seek times per spindle) EBS Volumes Pros: "Highly available" - AWS claims to provide redundancy and a lower failure rate than physical disks Portable - an EBS volume can be connected to any instance in a single availability zone Backups - can easily create snapshots ]]></description>
      </item><item>
        <title>&lt;![CDATA[From CET to CDT]]&gt;</title>
        <link>https://victortrac.com/posts/from-cet-to-cdt/</link>
        <pubDate>Tue, 29 Jul 2008 00:00:00 &#43;0000</pubDate>
        <guid>https://victortrac.com/posts/from-cet-to-cdt/</guid>
        <description><![CDATA[ Memory is really strange. On the one hand, I’m amazed at how fast the last three years of my life has gone by. I remember walking into my hotel room on the day I landed in Stuttgart, a full month before Rebecca would come, and putting down my bags and really wondering what I had gotten myself into. I had decided to take a job in a city I had visited only during my interviews, in a country I had only spent a few days in as a tourist, and here I am sitting down in my hotel room, in need of a shower, exhausted from jet-lag, only then grasping that I had committed myself and Rebecca to living in Stuttgart for at least three years. At that moment I could only hope that we had made the right choice to come. It turned out to be one of the best decisions of our lives.
]]></description>
      </item><item>
        <title>&lt;![CDATA[FOSDEM over; Crisis averted]]&gt;</title>
        <link>https://victortrac.com/posts/fosdem-over-crisis-averted/</link>
        <pubDate>Sun, 02 Mar 2008 00:00:00 &#43;0000</pubDate>
        <guid>https://victortrac.com/posts/fosdem-over-crisis-averted/</guid>
        <description><![CDATA[
I went to Brussels last weekend for FOSDEM 2008, which was held at ULB Campus Solbosh. The free event was a good way to check in with the overall Open Source community and to see all of the interesting things people outside my normal circles are working on.
]]></description>
      </item><item>
        <title>&lt;![CDATA[Local root exploit in Linux kernel 2.6.17 to 2.6.24.1]]&gt;</title>
        <link>https://victortrac.com/posts/local-root-exploit-in-linux-kernel-2-6-17-to-2-6-24-1/</link>
        <pubDate>Sun, 10 Feb 2008 00:00:00 &#43;0000</pubDate>
        <guid>https://victortrac.com/posts/local-root-exploit-in-linux-kernel-2-6-17-to-2-6-24-1/</guid>
        <description><![CDATA[Pretty scary stuff, even if you trust all of your users:
victor@mercury ~ $ ./exploit ----------------------------------- Linux vmsplice Local Root Exploit By qaaz ----------------------------------- [+] mmap: 0x100000000000 .. 0x100000001000 [+] page: 0x100000000000 [+] page: 0x100000000038 [+] mmap: 0x4000 .. 0x5000 [+] page: 0x4000 [+] page: 0x4038 [+] mmap: 0x1000 .. 0x2000 [+] page: 0x1000 [+] mmap: 0x2ac3dee3c000 .. 0x2ac3dee6e000 [+] root mercury ~ # whoami root]]></description>
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        <title>&lt;![CDATA[Migrating to Google Apps (and getting everything working)]]&gt;</title>
        <link>https://victortrac.com/posts/migrating-to-google-apps-and-getting-everything-working/</link>
        <pubDate>Sat, 12 Jan 2008 00:00:00 &#43;0000</pubDate>
        <guid>https://victortrac.com/posts/migrating-to-google-apps-and-getting-everything-working/</guid>
        <description><![CDATA[For the last few years I’ve been using Gmail exclusively and have been forwarding emails to @victortrac.com to my Gmail account. Google’s spam filters are the best I’ve ever seen, and the interface is elegant and fast, and combined with loads of storage and IMAP access, Gmail is nearly the perfect email application. The XMPP integration is just icing on the cake.
Because of these features, I voluntarily gave up having a customized email address on my personal domain to take advantage of Google’s infrastructure and technology. The decision was fairly easy - I was deluged in spam and GMail’s web client was better than any other thin or thick client available. By forwarding my domain’s email to my Gmail account, I was letting Google’s wonderful anti-spam technology work its magic. This allowed me to retain some use of my previous email address, but as I started to use XMPP (aka Jabber or as Google calls it - Google Talk) I became more and more dependent on my Gmail identity. Sure, I had other Jabber IDs, but it was just too convenient having a unified email address and Jabber ID provided by Gmail.
]]></description>
      </item><item>
        <title>&lt;![CDATA[Where&#39;s the &#34;Undo&#34; on Google Reader?]]&gt;</title>
        <link>https://victortrac.com/posts/wheres-the-undo-on-google-reader/</link>
        <pubDate>Tue, 18 Dec 2007 00:00:00 &#43;0000</pubDate>
        <guid>https://victortrac.com/posts/wheres-the-undo-on-google-reader/</guid>
        <description><![CDATA[There’s been a bunch of press lately about Google Reader’s new features, most notably the “Friends’ shared items” section and Profiles. A handful of people were instantly complaining about the lack of privacy and control, but I don’t really see Google’s implementation as a problem. It seems pretty simple to go to “Manage friends” and hide the contacts you don’t want looking at your shared items, but this really kind of defeats the purpose of using your shared items to begin with. If anything, I think Google’s decision to automatically include your GTalk contacts just makes it that much likelier that I’ll read and see my contacts’ shared items. I wouldn’t spend the time to go through my contacts to subscribe, but having them there automatically is great. It’s giving me the benefits of filtered reading list through a social network I wouldn’t have bothered to use otherwise.
]]></description>
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        <title>&lt;![CDATA[Technology is Applied Magic]]&gt;</title>
        <link>https://victortrac.com/posts/technology-is-applied-magic/</link>
        <pubDate>Sat, 08 Dec 2007 00:00:00 &#43;0000</pubDate>
        <guid>https://victortrac.com/posts/technology-is-applied-magic/</guid>
        <description><![CDATA[A few hours ago, Rebecca and I were walking through the Schwabstrasse S-bahn stop in Stuttgart, and as we reached the escalator to go up, we felt a cold wind coming down from the street level. I was wearing only a short-sleeve polo shirt and a pair of light pants, and so we stopped to put on warmer clothing. Only a few hours earlier, we were having paella on a warm Malvarrossa beach in Valencia, Spain.
]]></description>
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        <title>&lt;![CDATA[de.php.net has an invalid DNS entry]]&gt;</title>
        <link>https://victortrac.com/posts/de-php-net-has-an-invalid-dns-entry/</link>
        <pubDate>Sun, 02 Dec 2007 00:00:00 &#43;0000</pubDate>
        <guid>https://victortrac.com/posts/de-php-net-has-an-invalid-dns-entry/</guid>
        <description><![CDATA[For a few days now, I’ve been unable to reach http://de.php.net, not because the site has been down but because of incorrect DNS configuration by de.php.net’s Germany host. When you request a PHP manual page, PHP.net does this trick of geo-locating your IP and redirects you to your closet PHP.net mirror.
If you take a look, de.php.net is actually a CNAME record for php3.globe.de, which is in turn authoritative at ns1.dns-service.net. The problem is ns1.dns-service.net doesn’t have a record for php3.globe.de:
]]></description>
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        <title>&lt;![CDATA[Upgrading a 1.0.2 iPhone to 1.1.1 Painlessly on Windows]]&gt;</title>
        <link>https://victortrac.com/posts/upgrading-a-1-0-2-iphone-to-1-1-1-painlessly-on-windows/</link>
        <pubDate>Thu, 25 Oct 2007 00:00:00 &#43;0000</pubDate>
        <guid>https://victortrac.com/posts/upgrading-a-1-0-2-iphone-to-1-1-1-painlessly-on-windows/</guid>
        <description><![CDATA[I’ve been mulling over upgrading my iPhone’s firmware to 1.1.1 for the last few weeks but have been put off by the complexity of it. All the tools and steps had been outlined so it was merely just running through the steps, but there were a ton of them, and it seemed like more of a pain in the ass than it was worth. Well, the hacker community has come through again with a easy solution, and now the 1.0.2->1.1.1 process is pretty painless. If you have an unlocked 1.0.2 iPhone and used AnySIM 1.0x to do it, you must “virginize” your iPhone before you can upgrade to 1.1.1. Apparently AnySIM 1.0x had a bug that damaged the seczone of your baseband firmware, causing the 1.1.1 upgrade to brick your iPhone. With the new release of the iphone-elite RevirginizingTool, here’s how you do it on a Windows machine:
]]></description>
      </item><item>
        <title>&lt;![CDATA[iPhone owned]]&gt;</title>
        <link>https://victortrac.com/posts/iphone-owned/</link>
        <pubDate>Tue, 02 Oct 2007 00:00:00 &#43;0000</pubDate>
        <guid>https://victortrac.com/posts/iphone-owned/</guid>
        <description><![CDATA[This is the first time I’ve been back in the States since the iPhone was released, and after getting a chance to play with one yesterday, I decided I had to go out and buy one today. The problem is that AT&T-locked JesusPhone doesn’t work in Germany without a little bit of hackery, and Apple’s just-released-last-week 1.1.1 firmware is reported all over the internet to brick hacked iPhones. Would an AT&T store in Mount Pleasant, SC turn over so many iPhones that they would already be selling boxed 1.1.1 models?
]]></description>
      </item><item>
        <title>&lt;![CDATA[Google Docs How-To]]&gt;</title>
        <link>https://victortrac.com/posts/google-docs-how-to/</link>
        <pubDate>Tue, 18 Sep 2007 00:00:00 &#43;0000</pubDate>
        <guid>https://victortrac.com/posts/google-docs-how-to/</guid>
        <description><![CDATA[The Network is becoming more the Computer.
]]></description>
      </item><item>
        <title>&lt;![CDATA[August 6, 2001]]&gt;</title>
        <link>https://victortrac.com/photos/august-6-2001/</link>
        <pubDate>Tue, 11 Sep 2007 00:00:00 &#43;0000</pubDate>
        <guid>https://victortrac.com/photos/august-6-2001/</guid>
        <description><![CDATA[ traffic on the brooklyn bridge ]]></description>
      </item><item>
        <title>&lt;![CDATA[Gentoo upgrade to Apache 2.2]]&gt;</title>
        <link>https://victortrac.com/posts/gentoo-upgrade-to-apache-2-2/</link>
        <pubDate>Sat, 08 Sep 2007 00:00:00 &#43;0000</pubDate>
        <guid>https://victortrac.com/posts/gentoo-upgrade-to-apache-2-2/</guid>
        <description><![CDATA[I upgraded my server’s apache from 2.0 to 2.2 today (see http://httpd.apache.org/docs/2.2/new_features_2_2.html" target=_new”>Overview of new features in Apache 2.2) and it was painless except for a few minor hiccups. I like to keep my server’s packages up to date with Gentoo’s stable packages not just for new features but mainly to make package upgrades as easy as possible. I find that by staying up to date with upstream stable packages, upgrades are more incremental and rarely cause as much difficulty as having to upgrade from multiple major versions behind.
]]></description>
      </item><item>
        <title>&lt;![CDATA[I can finally check this off]]&gt;</title>
        <link>https://victortrac.com/posts/i-can-finally-check-this-off/</link>
        <pubDate>Sat, 11 Aug 2007 00:00:00 &#43;0000</pubDate>
        <guid>https://victortrac.com/posts/i-can-finally-check-this-off/</guid>
        <description><![CDATA[A little bit of the YUI Library, lots of Drupal, and about two weeks of on and off work has resulted in a new theme for my site. It’s been long overdue for a makeover. The overarching goal was simplicity and good UI, and I’m pretty happy with the results so far.
Yahoo’s YUI is pretty easy to integrate into Drupal, and allowed me to get started quickly. From the YUI library, I’m getting a good Grid-based layout and a ton of rendering and UI improvement tweaks that I would otherwise overlook. I highly recommend the YUI library.
]]></description>
      </item><item>
        <title>&lt;![CDATA[Auschwitz]]&gt;</title>
        <link>https://victortrac.com/photos/auschwitz/</link>
        <pubDate>Sat, 11 Aug 2007 00:00:00 &#43;0000</pubDate>
        <guid>https://victortrac.com/photos/auschwitz/</guid>
        <description><![CDATA[ auschwitz Rebecca and I went to Poland a few weeks back, and visiting Auschwitz is one of the most humbling experiences I’ve ever had.
]]></description>
      </item><item>
        <title>&lt;![CDATA[2002 WSBF Taco Eat-Off]]&gt;</title>
        <link>https://victortrac.com/posts/2002-wsbf-taco-eat-off/</link>
        <pubDate>Tue, 08 May 2007 00:00:00 &#43;0000</pubDate>
        <guid>https://victortrac.com/posts/2002-wsbf-taco-eat-off/</guid>
        <description><![CDATA[ I shot this video while I was a DJ at WSBF, Clemson’s student run radio station. It was a fun event, although the video probably could use a bit more editing to make it shorter.
]]></description>
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        <title>&lt;![CDATA[A downside of VoIP]]&gt;</title>
        <link>https://victortrac.com/posts/a-downside-of-voip/</link>
        <pubDate>Mon, 30 Apr 2007 00:00:00 &#43;0000</pubDate>
        <guid>https://victortrac.com/posts/a-downside-of-voip/</guid>
        <description><![CDATA[I live in Germany but maintain a US-based VoIP number through a VoicePulse.com account. The VoIP account allows Rebecca and me to cheaply call the US, and gives our friends and family a “local” US number at which they can reach us in Germany. I’ve got a standard digitally cordless analog phone (heh) that plugs into a Fritzbox supplied by my ISP - 1und1.de. The Fritzbox is a wonderful piece of kit that works as a DSL modem, DHCP-enabled router, WIFI AP, and has two analog telephone adapters (ATAs) built-in. Since 1und1 gives us a free German VoIP number, the FritzBox handles three incoming and outgoing phone lines - my VoicePulse US number, my 1und1 Germany number, and my standard analog line supplied by Deutsche Telekom. Any incoming call lights up all phones connected to the FritzBox. Add in mine and Rebecca’s mobile phones, and in one apartment we have five phone numbers between the two of us. It only seems slightly overkill.
]]></description>
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        <title>&lt;![CDATA[Stuttgart&#39;s Besenwirtschaften]]&gt;</title>
        <link>https://victortrac.com/posts/stuttgarts-besenwirtschaften/</link>
        <pubDate>Mon, 05 Mar 2007 00:00:00 &#43;0000</pubDate>
        <guid>https://victortrac.com/posts/stuttgarts-besenwirtschaften/</guid>
        <description><![CDATA[Stuttgart has these wonderful little hidden little charms that make it a really great place to live. One of our favorites are the Besenwirtschaften, which are traditional Swabian wine houses. They’re operated by the families that own the numerous vineyards around the Stuttgart area, and by law they are allowed to open 4 months out of the year. They are scattered throughout the city and its surrounding towns, and if you find one you can enjoy very simple (and cheap) Swabian food and fresh wine from that year.
]]></description>
      </item><item>
        <title>&lt;![CDATA[Streamburst is brilliant]]&gt;</title>
        <link>https://victortrac.com/posts/streamburst-is-brilliant/</link>
        <pubDate>Wed, 21 Feb 2007 00:00:00 &#43;0000</pubDate>
        <guid>https://victortrac.com/posts/streamburst-is-brilliant/</guid>
        <description><![CDATA[I just came across Streamburst via Techcrunch. Within minutes, I was happily downloading In Search of the Valley at a blistering 8-9 megabits per second, probably the closest I’ve ever gotten to topping out my 16-megabit ADSL connection. By the time I finish this blog post, a full DRM-free 1.1 gigabyte DVD-quality movie will be ready to watch, all for $7.99. That’s brilliant.
I went to ISOTV’s website, added the downloadable movie to my part, and paid using paypal. I was then presented with three download options:
]]></description>
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        <title>&lt;![CDATA[Samsung ML-2010 printing using CUPS and Splix on Gentoo AMD64]]&gt;</title>
        <link>https://victortrac.com/posts/samsung-ml-2010-printing-using-cups-and-splix-on-gentoo-amd64/</link>
        <pubDate>Mon, 19 Feb 2007 00:00:00 &#43;0000</pubDate>
        <guid>https://victortrac.com/posts/samsung-ml-2010-printing-using-cups-and-splix-on-gentoo-amd64/</guid>
        <description><![CDATA[The Samsung ML-2010 is a great bargain laserjet printer. I bought it from NewEgg last year for $49 after a $50 mail-in rebate, which I quickly recieved. While it doesn’t see too much more than 5-10 pages per week, I’ve never had to replace the toner cartridge.
Using the Splix driver, it works great under Linux, specifically Gentoo AMD64 (x86_64) in my case. Here’s how you can get it to work, assuming you already have CUPS properly installed and working (most of this will apply to any distro):
]]></description>
      </item><item>
        <title>&lt;![CDATA[Self balancing pendubot]]&gt;</title>
        <link>https://victortrac.com/posts/self-balancing-pendubot/</link>
        <pubDate>Sun, 18 Feb 2007 00:00:00 &#43;0000</pubDate>
        <guid>https://victortrac.com/posts/self-balancing-pendubot/</guid>
        <description><![CDATA[ That’s my friend Tim with our final project as Clemson EE students back in 2004. We were given a computer running QNX and told to build a pendubot:
The Pendubot is a two-linked inverted pendulum actuated by a single motor. The links are connected to each other by a rotational joint, and the base of one link is connected to the motor. Control of the Pendubot is available only at the base of one of the links, thus the challenge of the project is to balance the top link by only the bottom link. I recently found this video, and so I thought I’d share by making my first youtube.com upload.
]]></description>
      </item><item>
        <title>&lt;![CDATA[wandoclassof99.com]]&gt;</title>
        <link>https://victortrac.com/posts/wandoclassof99-com/</link>
        <pubDate>Sat, 03 Feb 2007 00:00:00 &#43;0000</pubDate>
        <guid>https://victortrac.com/posts/wandoclassof99-com/</guid>
        <description><![CDATA[A few months ago I was asked if I could create a small website for my high school graduating class' 10 year reunion. My immediate thought was "Wha? It's been 10 years already?!," but it turns out no, I graduated high school only 8 years ago. I've got another two years to go (Yes, the reunion is a long ways off, but look how quickly the last 8 years passed!).
]]></description>
      </item><item>
        <title>&lt;![CDATA[Surfing in Munich.. in the winter!]]&gt;</title>
        <link>https://victortrac.com/posts/surfing-in-munich-in-the-winter/</link>
        <pubDate>Wed, 24 Jan 2007 00:00:00 &#43;0000</pubDate>
        <guid>https://victortrac.com/posts/surfing-in-munich-in-the-winter/</guid>
        <description><![CDATA[
A few years ago a good friend and I were walking through Munich's famed Englischer Garten when we came across some guys surfing in a fast-flowing canal. It was really amusing to see these guys surf back and forth for a minute or two before falling or conceding to the next surfer. While it was highly unusual to see people surfing downtown in a city, it was at least summer-time and quite hot. It turns out there are crazies there all year surfing. ]]></description>
      </item><item>
        <title>&lt;![CDATA[The iPhone hath cometh]]&gt;</title>
        <link>https://victortrac.com/posts/the-iphone-hath-cometh/</link>
        <pubDate>Tue, 09 Jan 2007 00:00:00 &#43;0000</pubDate>
        <guid>https://victortrac.com/posts/the-iphone-hath-cometh/</guid>
        <description><![CDATA[ I am impressed. After months of rumor and speculation, Apple Computer has finally announced the iPhone. From the stream of pictures coming from sites like Engadget, the upcoming iPhone looks even more impressive than anything Apple fanboys have conjured up in Photoshop. The hardware features are outstanding - high resolution 3.5" tough screen, 2 megapixel camera, bluetooth, quad-band GSM, Wifi, and either 4 or 8 gigs of onboard memory. ]]></description>
      </item><item>
        <title>&lt;![CDATA[Symantec Harmware Suite 2007]]&gt;</title>
        <link>https://victortrac.com/posts/symantec-harmware-suite-2007/</link>
        <pubDate>Tue, 02 Jan 2007 00:00:00 &#43;0000</pubDate>
        <guid>https://victortrac.com/posts/symantec-harmware-suite-2007/</guid>
        <description><![CDATA[I recently got back from visiting family in Ireland, and one of the things that I did during the trip was "fixing" the family's computer. I say fix loosely because all I really did was uninstall some really shitty software, namely by a company called Symantec. The family had a decent enough computer (P4 3ghz, 512mb RAM), but no matter what they were doing, the hard disk would grind away relentlessly. Normal events like starting Window XP's Control Panel or starting an application would require an annoyingly noticeable delay, even on a cold boot with nothing else running. Clearly something was amiss.
]]></description>
      </item><item>
        <title>&lt;![CDATA[The Family Connection]]&gt;</title>
        <link>https://victortrac.com/posts/the-family-connection/</link>
        <pubDate>Sun, 17 Dec 2006 00:00:00 &#43;0000</pubDate>
        <guid>https://victortrac.com/posts/the-family-connection/</guid>
        <description><![CDATA[I recently got married, and one of the results of marriage is that you gain some new family members. So I was pleasantly surprised to see that one of my cousin-in-laws, Jackson West, is writing for NewTeeVee, a newly found GigaOm-network website devoted to web video. It was only a few months ago that I found out Jackson was as much a pyromaniac as I am, as we tried to rig together as many bottle rockets as possible in one go. We both survived unscathed, and now it’s definitely good to see Jackson doing his thing for NewTeeVee. Looking forward to the new gig, Jackson.
]]></description>
      </item><item>
        <title>&lt;![CDATA[Honda&#39;s dreaming got Asimo hurt]]&gt;</title>
        <link>https://victortrac.com/posts/hondas-dreaming-got-asimo-hurt/</link>
        <pubDate>Thu, 14 Dec 2006 00:00:00 &#43;0000</pubDate>
        <guid>https://victortrac.com/posts/hondas-dreaming-got-asimo-hurt/</guid>
        <description><![CDATA[Maybe I’m just a big robotics nerd, but I actually rewound and repeatedly watched the actual moment where Asimo’s right leg collapses and he takes a nasty spill down the steps. Five times. Is it also silly that I was nervous, mostly for the engineers, the first time I saw this? Asimo looked so timid, while simultaneously courageous, as he lined up to take his first step. In front of all those people. Oh, the horror.
]]></description>
      </item><item>
        <title>&lt;![CDATA[Flash 9 sound on 64-bit Gentoo Linux]]&gt;</title>
        <link>https://victortrac.com/posts/flash-9-sound-on-64-bit-gentoo-linux/</link>
        <pubDate>Thu, 14 Dec 2006 00:00:00 &#43;0000</pubDate>
        <guid>https://victortrac.com/posts/flash-9-sound-on-64-bit-gentoo-linux/</guid>
        <description><![CDATA[I recently blew away my completely setup Gentoo desktop when I decided I needed to rebuild on a new RAID5 array. This meant that I got go through the entire Gentoo install, build, and configuration process from scratch, after not having had to do it for ages. I also took the opportunity to use LVM2 this time around, which I'll probably write about in a future post. Either the Gentoo process has gotten much easier or I've gotten much better with Gentoo. It was a fairly painless install, and it turned out my only real hiccup was getting flash9 to output sound to ALSA. I knew I had correctly installed ALSA since all my other ALSA applications output sound perfectly - Amarok, Kaffeine, and even aplay from the CLI. I also knew that Flash9 was completely ALSA based instead of OSS, so as long as other ALSA apps were playing, Flash9 should be playing. After a day of thinking about it, I gave up and visited #alsa on freenode.
]]></description>
      </item><item>
        <title>&lt;![CDATA[Ski-Gliding the Eiger]]&gt;</title>
        <link>https://victortrac.com/posts/ski-gliding-the-eiger/</link>
        <pubDate>Tue, 28 Nov 2006 00:00:00 &#43;0000</pubDate>
        <guid>https://victortrac.com/posts/ski-gliding-the-eiger/</guid>
        <description><![CDATA[These crazy guys over at Acro-Base made this video of one of them ski-gliding down the Eiger. It’s a terrifying video, at times showing the flier dangerously close to the rocks.
]]></description>
      </item><item>
        <title>&lt;![CDATA[11% of the world&#39;s countries?]]&gt;</title>
        <link>https://victortrac.com/posts/11-of-the-worlds-countries/</link>
        <pubDate>Tue, 28 Nov 2006 00:00:00 &#43;0000</pubDate>
        <guid>https://victortrac.com/posts/11-of-the-worlds-countries/</guid>
        <description><![CDATA[Apparently I’ve been to 11% of the world’s countries. I better get truckin’ if I want to join the Traveler’s Century Club anytime soon.
From travbuddy.com.
]]></description>
      </item><item>
        <title>&lt;![CDATA[Borat takes on Charleston]]&gt;</title>
        <link>https://victortrac.com/posts/borat-takes-on-charleston/</link>
        <pubDate>Thu, 26 Oct 2006 00:00:00 &#43;0000</pubDate>
        <guid>https://victortrac.com/posts/borat-takes-on-charleston/</guid>
        <description><![CDATA[ Controversial "reporter" Borat goes to my home town and takes on Charleston's societal elite. Hilarity ensues.
While you're at it, this is another great Borat video. This time he's interviewing James Broadwater (my favorite is the 10 minutes of silence):
]]></description>
      </item><item>
        <title>&lt;![CDATA[Bush uses The Google on teh internets]]&gt;</title>
        <link>https://victortrac.com/posts/bush-uses-the-google-on-teh-internets/</link>
        <pubDate>Wed, 25 Oct 2006 00:00:00 &#43;0000</pubDate>
        <guid>https://victortrac.com/posts/bush-uses-the-google-on-teh-internets/</guid>
        <description><![CDATA[ Transcript:
HOST: I’m curious, have you ever googled anybody? Do you use Google?
BUSH: Occasionally. One of the things I’ve used on the Google is to pull up maps. It’s very interesting to see — I’ve forgot the name of the program — but you get the satellite, and you can — like, I kinda like to look at the ranch. It remind me of where I wanna be sometimes. ]]></description>
      </item><item>
        <title>&lt;![CDATA[This American Life]]&gt;</title>
        <link>https://victortrac.com/posts/this-american-life/</link>
        <pubDate>Thu, 12 Oct 2006 00:00:00 &#43;0000</pubDate>
        <guid>https://victortrac.com/posts/this-american-life/</guid>
        <description><![CDATA[I stumbled upon This American Life back when I was still in college, when I used to regularly drive on Friday nights from Clemson, South Carolina to Davidson, North Carolina to visit my girlfriend at the time (who is now my wife). This drive was about four hours long and took me through such great bible-belt towns as Traveller's Rest and Spartanburg, so it didn't take me very long to sort through all the shitty radio stations along the way. Luckily for me, Greenville's WEPR-FM 90.1 broadcasted This American Life on Friday nights from 7:00pm to 8:00pm (and still does), and it quickly became my favorite show on the radio. I've been a TAL proselytizer ever since, probably to the point of annoying my friends.
]]></description>
      </item><item>
        <title>&lt;![CDATA[Giant Bug Attacks Stuttgart]]&gt;</title>
        <link>https://victortrac.com/posts/giant-bug-attacks-stuttgart/</link>
        <pubDate>Wed, 27 Sep 2006 00:00:00 &#43;0000</pubDate>
        <guid>https://victortrac.com/posts/giant-bug-attacks-stuttgart/</guid>
        <description><![CDATA[
Google Map’s cameras caught this bug in the midst of an attack on Stuttgart. It also looks like it’s crapping all over the field. Crikey!
]]></description>
      </item><item>
        <title>&lt;![CDATA[Best Toy Ever]]&gt;</title>
        <link>https://victortrac.com/posts/best-toy-ever/</link>
        <pubDate>Mon, 25 Sep 2006 00:00:00 &#43;0000</pubDate>
        <guid>https://victortrac.com/posts/best-toy-ever/</guid>
        <description><![CDATA[ This Canadian RC modeler built this setup using gyroscopes attached to his virtual reality headgear, independently controlling the camera on the RC airplane, while a standard controller handles all the flight servos. He’s able to wirelessly capture all video data streaming from the onboard camera. It’s amazing how well the headgear controls the onboard camera. It makes me really want to build my own… More info can be found at this forum post: http://www.rc-cam.com/forum/index.php?showtopic=1066&st=20
]]></description>
      </item><item>
        <title>&lt;![CDATA[Wedding over, Pictures online]]&gt;</title>
        <link>https://victortrac.com/posts/wedding-over-pictures-online/</link>
        <pubDate>Thu, 10 Aug 2006 00:00:00 &#43;0000</pubDate>
        <guid>https://victortrac.com/posts/wedding-over-pictures-online/</guid>
        <description><![CDATA[
We've finally recieved our pictures from the photographer, over a month after our wedding (that's another blog entry). About a third of the pictures are on Flickr.com, so head on over there to see our gallery. Be sure to add comments and contribute your own photos taking during our celebration in our Wedding Images Group. Thanks again to everyone for helping us celebrate.
]]></description>
      </item><item>
        <title>&lt;![CDATA[Deutschland wins!]]&gt;</title>
        <link>https://victortrac.com/posts/deutschland-wins/</link>
        <pubDate>Fri, 16 Jun 2006 00:00:00 &#43;0000</pubDate>
        <guid>https://victortrac.com/posts/deutschland-wins/</guid>
        <description><![CDATA[ It took 91 minutes, but Germany managed to pull it off in the end, and Stuttgart explodes in celebration. Within moments, thousands of cars all over the city were all honking simultaneously, congratulating each other on a well played victory. It was a Wednesday night, but for Germans it was the night before a Thursday holiday, so everyone must have been up celebrating all night. We heard yelps and woots and honks for hours, especially since we’ve had to keep all of our windows open to keep the apartment cool. But in the end, we had a blast and felt like we were part of the winning team.
]]></description>
      </item><item>
        <title>&lt;![CDATA[jacksonpollock.org]]&gt;</title>
        <link>https://victortrac.com/posts/jacksonpollock-org/</link>
        <pubDate>Fri, 02 Jun 2006 00:00:00 &#43;0000</pubDate>
        <guid>https://victortrac.com/posts/jacksonpollock-org/</guid>
        <description><![CDATA[ Looking to kill a few minutes? Like Jackson Pollock?. Just move your mouse around at jacksonpollock.org and create your own. Left click to change color, and the rest is natural.
]]></description>
      </item><item>
        <title>&lt;![CDATA[Esslingen Wine Hike]]&gt;</title>
        <link>https://victortrac.com/posts/esslingen-wine-hike/</link>
        <pubDate>Sun, 21 May 2006 00:00:00 &#43;0000</pubDate>
        <guid>https://victortrac.com/posts/esslingen-wine-hike/</guid>
        <description><![CDATA[ Rebecca and I had a great time today in Esslingen at the annual Esslingen Weinwandertag, an annual wine hike through the vineyards surrounding the town of Esslingen. We started off in Esslingen and wandered up a path leading to the vineyards and a few hours (and many wine glasses) later we arrived in Mettingen. At the start in Esslingen, we purchased a wineglass with a leather strap that brilliantly holds the glass upright around your neck, and every few hundred meters along the path we filled up with some delicious local wine and German snacks. We ran into some of my co-workers so we made the rest of the trek with them, which made for never empty glasses. It's a brilliant festival and loads of fun. These kinds of events are what's missing from life in America.
]]></description>
      </item><item>
        <title>&lt;![CDATA[Finally seeing some services based on Amazon&#39;s S3]]&gt;</title>
        <link>https://victortrac.com/posts/finally-seeing-some-services-based-on-amazons-s3/</link>
        <pubDate>Wed, 17 May 2006 00:00:00 &#43;0000</pubDate>
        <guid>https://victortrac.com/posts/finally-seeing-some-services-based-on-amazons-s3/</guid>
        <description><![CDATA[Months ago Amazon announced S3, which promised unlimited, fast, and inexpensive storage of any kind as a web service. For $.15/gig/month storage and $.20/gig/month bandwidth, it instantly gives anyone with some programming knowledge the ability to use an enterprise class storage network with zero up front cost. Anyway, today I stumbled upon jungledisk and elephantdrive. JungleDisk seems more like a project than a commercial venture, since you download one of their clients and plug in your own s3 account. You pay nothing to jungleddisk (for now) and pay Amazon for only what you use at s3. Elephantdrive is definitely a commercial venture and completely hides their affiliation with s3, but they do extend amazon's SLA to the end user. I signed up at Elephantdrive, but unfortunately for now they only have a Windows client and so I'm forced to wait until their cross platform comes out. ]]></description>
      </item><item>
        <title>&lt;![CDATA[Gerber Daisy]]&gt;</title>
        <link>https://victortrac.com/posts/gerber-daisy/</link>
        <pubDate>Tue, 16 May 2006 00:00:00 &#43;0000</pubDate>
        <guid>https://victortrac.com/posts/gerber-daisy/</guid>
        <description><![CDATA[ Chrys lent me his Canon 100mm macro lens a few weeks ago, and I haven’t really played with it until now. Rebecca and I came back from Obi with a ton of new plants and flowers for our balcony, after we planted them I had a good excuse to use the lens. Wow, what a sharp lens. I’m impressed.
]]></description>
      </item><item>
        <title>&lt;![CDATA[An amazing juggler]]&gt;</title>
        <link>https://victortrac.com/posts/an-amazing-juggler/</link>
        <pubDate>Sun, 16 Apr 2006 00:00:00 &#43;0000</pubDate>
        <guid>https://victortrac.com/posts/an-amazing-juggler/</guid>
        <description><![CDATA[If you like the Beatles, you'll find this video clip amazing. I keep expecting him to drop something, but he keeps rocking out. He's much better than the jugglers I see here on Stuttgart's Koenigstrasse. :)]]></description>
      </item><item>
        <title>&lt;![CDATA[PHP Scalability?]]&gt;</title>
        <link>https://victortrac.com/posts/php-scalability/</link>
        <pubDate>Wed, 12 Apr 2006 00:00:00 &#43;0000</pubDate>
        <guid>https://victortrac.com/posts/php-scalability/</guid>
        <description><![CDATA[Brian Fioca of Jobby recently talked to Owen Bryne, senior software engineer and one of the co-founders of digg.com, about the scalability of PHP on big sites. It turns out at digg.com, PHP scales really well:
To get a better idea of what was in store for a heavily loaded PHP application, I set up an interview with Owen Byrne, cofounder and Senior Software Engineer at digg.com. From talking with Owen I learned digg.com gets on the order of 200 million page views per month, and they’re able to handle it with only 3 web servers and 8 small database servers (I’ll discuss the reason for so many database servers in the next section). Even better news was that they were able to handle their first year’s worth of growth on a single hosted server like the one I was using. My hardware worries were relieved. The hardware requirements to run high-traffic PHP applications didn’t seem to be more costly than for Java.
Mr. Fioca claims to have more experience working with Java and traditional big iron databases, and so he spends most of the article comparing his Java experience with digg’s PHP architecture. What’s really interesting is the tidbit about digg’s tremendous traffic being served by only 3 web servers (and 8 database servers). Technorati Tags: php, apache, architecture
]]></description>
      </item><item>
        <title>&lt;![CDATA[An excellent analysis of software patents]]&gt;</title>
        <link>https://victortrac.com/posts/an-excellent-analysis-of-software-patents/</link>
        <pubDate>Mon, 10 Apr 2006 00:00:00 &#43;0000</pubDate>
        <guid>https://victortrac.com/posts/an-excellent-analysis-of-software-patents/</guid>
        <description><![CDATA[Paul Graham writes some good stuff. I've stumbled across some of this articles in the past and, unlike most of these types of essays from other dot-com millionaires, I've always been very impressed. His latest essay takes on the subject of software patents, a subject that nearly every hacker has an uninformed opinion about. I've always had a very libertarian view about patents in general, and was very glad to read that by Mr. Graham's assessment, I'm at least uniform in my opinions on the validity or worth of patents in our society.
Mr. Graham compares software patents to traditional patents, insightfully and accurately explaining what he thinks are some reasons for the sometimes silly patents issued by the USPTO. He compares the rules to a game of hockey, and lawsuits to the rules of body-checking:
]]></description>
      </item><item>
        <title>&lt;![CDATA[Cisco VPN Client and Linux kernel 2.6.15]]&gt;</title>
        <link>https://victortrac.com/posts/cisco-vpn-client-and-linux-kernel-2-6-15/</link>
        <pubDate>Thu, 06 Apr 2006 00:00:00 &#43;0000</pubDate>
        <guid>https://victortrac.com/posts/cisco-vpn-client-and-linux-kernel-2-6-15/</guid>
        <description><![CDATA[I’ve always struggled with the Cisco VPN client for linux. It has seemingly never installed smoothly for me, but now I finally have figured out what’s going on. Last week I built a Debian Sarge (stable) box, and installed Cisco’s VPN client v4.7. I used a patched installer I had made a long time ago (and forgot why I needed to patch it), but the module compile was failing. After lots of frustration, I reversed the patch to the original sources, and then the installer compiled the kernel module without any problems. I was using the Sarge 686-SMP (officially linux-image-2.6-686-smp) kernel on a dual Xeon SMP 3.0Ghz box, which for Stable means kernel 2.6.8-3-686-smp. ]]></description>
      </item><item>
        <title>&lt;![CDATA[Stuttgart&#39;s Staatgalerie and the Wilhema]]&gt;</title>
        <link>https://victortrac.com/posts/stuttgarts-staatgalerie-and-the-wilhema/</link>
        <pubDate>Sat, 18 Mar 2006 00:00:00 &#43;0000</pubDate>
        <guid>https://victortrac.com/posts/stuttgarts-staatgalerie-and-the-wilhema/</guid>
        <description><![CDATA[Rebecca and I joined another couple and went to the Stuttgarter Lange Nacht der Museen event earlier tonight, and I'm happy to report that we had quite a lot of fun. The basic idea is that for €12, you have a free pass to all of Stuttgart's museums, including other sites like the famed TV Tower and the Wilhema zoo & botanical gardens, complete with special shuttles running between all the sites. It sounded like a good idea, and we had heard about it before but didn't go, so we decided to take advantage of it this time.
]]></description>
      </item><item>
        <title>&lt;![CDATA[Zooomr, a Flickr challenger?]]&gt;</title>
        <link>https://victortrac.com/posts/zooomr-a-flickr-challenger/</link>
        <pubDate>Sun, 12 Feb 2006 00:00:00 &#43;0000</pubDate>
        <guid>https://victortrac.com/posts/zooomr-a-flickr-challenger/</guid>
        <description><![CDATA[There's a new photohosting site that just got out of public beta - Zooomr. The similarities between it and Flickr don't just stop at the name - the rest of the site seems to take all of Flickr's good UI points as well. However, it's obvious that the people responsible for Zooomr, BlueBridge Technologies Group, fully intend to innovate.
Homer!Hosted on Zooomr One of the first thing you notice when you go to register at Zooomr is that you don't have to actually register. You can log in using federated ID authentication from numerous other services - Level9 R5, OpenID, LiveJournal, Google, and Meetro. I logged in with my Google account, and within seconds I was able to edit my Zooomr profile. After finding a test picture to upload, I was able to upload and start my Zooomr experience within minutes of signing in (the longest time was spent trying to find an actual photo to upload). ]]></description>
      </item><item>
        <title>&lt;![CDATA[A New Year]]&gt;</title>
        <link>https://victortrac.com/posts/a-new-year/</link>
        <pubDate>Sun, 08 Jan 2006 00:00:00 &#43;0000</pubDate>
        <guid>https://victortrac.com/posts/a-new-year/</guid>
        <description><![CDATA[2006 is here, and for the second year in a row I’ve spent the beginning of the new year in Europe. Last year it was Paris, and this year it was Stuttgart, and our Stuttgart experience was about 100 times more pleasant than it was in Paris.
Rebecca and I just had a quiet night and watched fireworks from our living room, from which we can see nearly the entire downtown of Stuttgart.
]]></description>
      </item><item>
        <title>&lt;![CDATA[Christmas in Stuttgart]]&gt;</title>
        <link>https://victortrac.com/posts/christmas-in-stuttgart/</link>
        <pubDate>Sat, 17 Dec 2005 00:00:00 &#43;0000</pubDate>
        <guid>https://victortrac.com/posts/christmas-in-stuttgart/</guid>
        <description><![CDATA[It's amazing to think that I've now been in Stuttgart for 4 and a half months. Only 6 more weeks and I can claim the 6 months mark. Four and a half months doesn't sound too long, but when I put it in terms years - half a year - it suddenly becomes a much bigger amount of time. Four and a half months brings me to the middle of December, which means that there's only another week until Christmas. In the true spirit of Christmas, Rebecca and I went shopping for nearly the entire day. Hours later we end up spending a couple hundred Euros at Ikea. Rebecca has been stalking this giant living room rug at Ikea for months, and although Ikea's online inventory system showed that the rug was out of stock, we happened upon it at Ikea today. Of course we had to get it, which later turned out to be a mistake. So we ended up purchasing two rugs (one for the living room and another for the study), a Christmas tree stand, a bunch of plastic Christmas decoration balls, and a few small miscallaneous items. From Ikea we went straight to Patch for some groceries, and then finally we headed back downtown for one last stop before going home - the local Christmas tree seller. Rebecca and I ended up quickly picking a 20 Euro fir, and within 5 minutes had the tree wrapped up in my Jeep, and we were on our way home.
]]></description>
      </item><item>
        <title>&lt;![CDATA[My New Favorite Chinese Restaurant]]&gt;</title>
        <link>https://victortrac.com/posts/my-new-favorite-chinese-restaurant/</link>
        <pubDate>Sat, 06 Aug 2005 00:00:00 &#43;0000</pubDate>
        <guid>https://victortrac.com/posts/my-new-favorite-chinese-restaurant/</guid>
        <description><![CDATA[I was searching for food earlier this evening along Stuttgart’s Koenigstrasse, and as I was just congratulating myself for walking by McDonald’s without giving into the temptation of a quick, familiar meal, I saw a sign for the China Garden. The sign was right on Koenigstrasse, and it said to go up to the 2nd level to find the restaurant. I haven’t had good ol’ MSG-laden, sauce heavy, Chinese food in a while, so I walked right in without even glancing to see what was on their posted menu.
]]></description>
      </item><item>
        <title>&lt;![CDATA[Two weeks later]]&gt;</title>
        <link>https://victortrac.com/posts/two-weeks-later/</link>
        <pubDate>Thu, 04 Aug 2005 00:00:00 &#43;0000</pubDate>
        <guid>https://victortrac.com/posts/two-weeks-later/</guid>
        <description><![CDATA[Tomorrow marks my first full week of living in Stuttgart. It has seemed much longer than a week, and I’m surprised as I write this that it has only been that short of a time period. It’s been quite a busy week with all of my admin stuff as well as trying to catch up to speed with everything going on at work.
I’ve been living in the Millenium Hotel for the last 6 nights, so I’ve got quite a ways to go. I reserved a full month, but from what others have been saying, it may be a long time before I find a suitable house or apartment. I think 30 days here at the Millenium won’t be too bad, but I don’t know how much longer I can stand it after that. It’s nice waking up to a breakfast consisting of basically whatever I want, and it’s nice always having a clean room. For 6 out of the 7 nights I’ve been in Stuttgart, I’ve had dinner at one of the handful of restaurants here at the Millenium complex, and that’s quickly becoming one of the major drags. Already I’m not digging having to eat out every night. The 189 Euro/month for 2Gbs of wireless internet is also a huge downer. Damn you Swiss Telecom.
]]></description>
      </item><item>
        <title>&lt;![CDATA[Another week]]&gt;</title>
        <link>https://victortrac.com/posts/another-week/</link>
        <pubDate>Tue, 19 Jul 2005 00:00:00 &#43;0000</pubDate>
        <guid>https://victortrac.com/posts/another-week/</guid>
        <description><![CDATA[Today marks the last week that I’ll be in Charleston before leaving for Germany. In some ways I was glad that things were slightly delayed because I got to spend time with friends whom I won’t be seeing for a while. This is going to be a hectic week as I have to start packing and finishing up a ton of stuff that I’ve been meaning to do (and putting off). Interesting times….
]]></description>
      </item><item>
        <title>&lt;![CDATA[Welcome]]&gt;</title>
        <link>https://victortrac.com/posts/welcome/</link>
        <pubDate>Fri, 01 Jul 2005 00:00:00 &#43;0000</pubDate>
        <guid>https://victortrac.com/posts/welcome/</guid>
        <description><![CDATA[Welcome to my website.
]]></description>
      </item><item>
        <title>&lt;![CDATA[Projects]]&gt;</title>
        <link>https://victortrac.com/projects/</link>
        <pubDate>Mon, 01 Jan 0001 00:00:00 &#43;0000</pubDate>
        <guid>https://victortrac.com/projects/</guid>
        <description><![CDATA[Recent things I have built. Some are polished products, some are tight utility apps, and all of them came from scratching a real itch.
wheres.app Visit wheres.app
wheres.app is a lightweight location-sharing app for the moments when “I am on my way” is not enough context. It is built to make coordination simpler, especially when plans are moving, people are mobile, and everyone needs the same source of truth.
The focus is speed and low friction: open the app, share the context that matters, and make it easier for people to understand where things stand without a long text thread.
]]></description>
      </item><item>
        <title>&lt;![CDATA[About]]&gt;</title>
        <link>https://victortrac.com/about/</link>
        <pubDate>Mon, 01 Jan 0001 00:00:00 &#43;0000</pubDate>
        <guid>https://victortrac.com/about/</guid>
        <description><![CDATA[ Hiking in Scotland with my son Finn From The Lateshift to Cloud Infrastructure Most people start their engineering careers with an internship; I started mine by “hustling” online casinos. While earning my Electrical Engineering degree at Clemson, I built and ran automated blackjack software across a farm of VMs called the Lateshift.
Now, I’m the Founder and CEO of CloudKite.io (infrastructure services) and Emory Peak Wellness (health & wellness brands). My past life includes engineering leadership at Wikibuy (which became CapitalOne Shopping), Bazaarvoice, and the US DoD.
]]></description>
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